Heron Preston Embraces the Brutality of Old New York for Fall

BROOKLYN — Heron Preston may have been born and raised in San Francisco, but it's New York that inspires him.

This is the reason why he returns after having shown several seasons in Paris and will host a show in his adopted city on Saturday. This will be the first official show as part of New York Fashion Week for the fashionable designer, who attended The New School's Parsons School of Design, created a breakout collection with the NYC Department of Sanitation and was a creative consultant for Calvin Klein.

"The first fashion shows I went to were in New York," Preston said during a a cast and preview of her fall collection at a studio in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, New York, earlier this week. "That was before I was even invited to fashion shows - I had to sneak in. It was early 2004-2005, when the shows seemed so raw to me. They weren't that overproduced. This I miss kind of brutality, so when you come to my fashion show, it's gonna be like that old New York I remember."

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His show, titled "Anything Goes", will offer Preston's distinct take on fashion - an aesthetic which includes everything from streetwear basics like graphic tees and hoodies to tech-worthy pieces like 3D-printed sneakers and Tyvek suits. There will be many references to New York; classic American and workwear pieces, such as varsity jackets and patchwork denims, as well as juxtaposed silk dresses with barbed wire detailing and chain mail shirts.

"I grew up watching all these New York movies and just wanted to live here", Preston said. . "It really called to me. I'm like a sponge; I just moved here and started to soak up the culture and the texture. I looked at the city as layers of materials and c That's what this collection is all about, found objects contrasting with all these different materials - from chainmail to bits of barbed wire.

"It's about taking a bit of what we know and twisting it", has he continued. "It's kind of my thing. How many times are you going to create a t-shirt, hoodie or pants? So it's about elevating those master pieces through the DNA of the brand that I 've developed over the years."

He said the show will explore the limits of this world he has created and the will expand. "I feel like I'm at a point in my design career where I can start building on what I've established," he said.

A recurring theme for Preston is sustainability. For his show, he sent out 400 unique invitations created from trash he collected around New York. The invitation reads in part: “Less new paper. Less new material. Less destructive to the environment. In my book, less is more and circularity is cool."

He explained: "It's meant to represent the extension of life and circulation, the recovery of what has already been made and still exists in perfect condition.”

He said fashion show invitations are not functional. “Most of the time they end up in the trash. So I said, why don't I just go to the trash and find things that are in perfect condition and can still be used? I was looking for clean, flat surfaces that could hold all the details of the fashion show. »

He said it was like "this great treasure hunt, walking through New York, Brooklyn [and] Chinatown. I was picking things up and walking with them. And sometimes when I looked closer, I saw dog pee, so I dropped that. It was definitely a process."